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Dr. Who & the Daleks Dr. Who: Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD |
Virgin Books Human Nature |
Author | Paul Cornell | |
Published | 1995 | |
Cover | Bill Donohoe |
Synopsis: Dr. John Smith is a short Scottish professor in the village of Farringham, who wants nothing more than a simple life and perhaps a chance at happiness. But strange images of an alien from the planet Gallifrey are invading his dreams and a woman called Bernice may know more than even he does about his real past... |
A Review by Tom May 13/4/98
There are moments in this book that prompt me to suggest that it is the finest original Doctor Who novel. This may seem just a little premature, as I've been a rather irregular reader of the adventures "new" and "missing," but that's an indication of how good this story is. It is recognisably in the mould of older NA's I've digested and enjoyed, such as Nightshade and Conundrum. And Cornell's writing in Human Nature has distinctly improved on No Future.
The plot, if not more coherent than No Future's, has an extra depth to it-- which is, of course, the unique concept of the Doctor choosing to sample life as a human.
The said human, inevitably goes by the name of Dr John Smith, a melancholy Scottish History teacher. His relationship with a middle-aged woman by the name of Joan is superbly executed, and utterly believable and touching. The sharp contrast of the pacifism of the Doctor/Dr Smith with his employment in a military-training school is one of the many enthralling aspects of this book, as is the discovery of one young character's future death in the trench warfare of World War One.
Paul Cornell, as you'd expect, writes perfectly for Benny. He did, after all, devise the character in Love and War. His marvellous writing for the Doctor is what makes this book the classic NA. You can very easily visualise McCoy as both Doctors, Time Lord and human, and if this had got on to television, surely McCoy would've become perhaps the best Doctor. The dark, solemn, manipulative Doctor is in evidence here, but not as graphic as in the end of Nightshade for example. The Doctor appears weary and wistful, and you can understand his aims in this book very well.
The plot does contain a race of invading aliens, the Aubertides, who are not the principal focus of the story, but provide a test for the Doctor. Another truly great theme in the book is the expectation both Benny and the reader feel towards Dr Smith for him to defeat the alien presence. This, it transpires, isn't the case, as Smith is a mere human, and has some tough choices to make.
This book starts intruigingly, and ends on a truly poignant note, and I'd obviously recommend it for all Doctor Who fans as it is absolutely superb. 10/10
A Review by Sean Gaffney 11/8/99
Human Nature. Well, I suspected that this would be a quiet book, and despite the incredible amount of action, I feel justified in that. This is a book that you have to read slowly, taking everything in. Every character has a purpose, especially the very well-characterised villains. The Doctor (or Smith, or both) has/ve never beeen better written, and Benny, as you would expect, shines.
This is one of those books where you have to go back and read it again, immediately, to get what's going on. Like my other current fave, Falls the Shadow, the levels just aren't all able to be taken in (um...I know that's grammatically wrong somehow...) in one sitting.
Who is John Smith? by Richard Radcliffe 16/3/01
I never liked Paul Cornell books. So many raved about him as the best author of DW Fiction. I found him to be too complex, trying to be too clever, and resulting in confusion for the reader. And then Human Nature came out, and I was blown away. Cornell could write great DW fiction after all. He could tell a simple story well.
The central premise of the book is beautifully simple - the Doctor takes a holiday from being himself, and becomes John Smith, History Teacher in 1914 England. Benny lives nearby, ever watchful, posing as the Doctor's niece. The book is, amongst other things, a romance. The Doctor meets Joan, a science teacher at the same school, and they become closer and closer as the novel progresses. The only weak link is the antagonists - the Aubertides. They are too "bland" for my tastes. But they are not the focus of the story, and don't detract too much from the magic.
It's delightfully written, full of warmth and wonder. It is bold and imaginative with a charm that's infectious. It combines everyday emotions we all experience with the wonder and magic of Who.
Cornell's masterpiece. 10/10
A Review by Finn Clark 2/4/02
Wow. I'd loved it back in 1995, but still... wow.
It's the best ever Doctor Who book! Or at least it is according to DWM's poll results, which gave Human Nature a not-yet-bettered score of 85%. Is it really that good? Um, yes it is.
The Aubertides are ridiculous, camp and annoying. I understand Paul described them as "Robert Holmes nonsense", but they barely pass muster as Bob Baker & Dave Martin nonsense. They're Cavis and Gandar five years before their time (albeit a little better on account of getting stuff to do), but that doesn't matter. They're not what the book's about.
The historical period isn't particularly rich either. It's never bad, but nor was the historical setting of the second half of Mark of the Rani. You don't taste the era. This is a Doctor Who adventure with touches of 1914 rather than a historical adventure with the Doctor in it. But again, that's not what the book's about... and anyway the epilogue went a long, long way towards giving the book some historical perspective (and broke my heart all over again to boot).
This book is a literal deconstruction of the Doctor. Our hero is taken apart, only to rediscover himself piece by piece. It's Timewyrm: Revelation all over again, but different. Oh, and gorgeous. It's a tragedy like Love and War, but beats it by being about the Doctor himself and not requiring anyone to be a bit of an idiot. Also the sacrifice here is self-sacrifice; Smith doesn't give up Joan to the bad guys, but instead himself. And then there's that scene afterwards between Joan and the Doctor...
It's full of neat touches. That's one artistic info-dump. You've got to admire the deftness with which Paul leads you through mysteries to their explanations. The Pod is the best McGuffin ever, bringing the baddies to Earth naturally rather than the usual contrived "yet more aliens decide to invade". Smith's childish reinvention of the Doctor Who mythos is interesting, not unlike a smaller-scale version of The Scarlet Empress's Aja'ib. And most importantly, you'll keep coming across charming little vignettes like the hug scene. It's delightful.
The message of the book is utterly Whoish. Paul is a huge Brigadier fan and has done some great stuff with him, but too often this has meant lots of soldiers and battle scenes. Human Nature also gives us gunplay, but this time Paul's rejecting it unambiguously.
Human Nature isn't perfect. It's got the Aubertides and it introduces Wolsey. But perfection isn't all it's cracked up to be. I loved it, loved it, loved it.
A Review by Terrence Keenan 15/7/02
I had been reluctant to try another novel by Paul Cornell after reading The Shadows of Avalon and walking away feeling disappointed. A second read of Avalon made all its faults more glaring. However, after talking with a few friends and trusted sources, I finally got a copy of Human Nature. I read the reviews here and at a few other sites, saw that Human Nature was acclaimed the "Greatest Doctor Who Novel of all time", saw it topped the novel rankings, etc.
I read Human Nature in about three days.
I am willing to admit that it could just be me, but I haven't hated a DW book this much since I wasted a week of my life reading Seeing I.
Um... where to begin? For starters, ripping off an Anne Rice story idea (The Tale of the Body Thief) is not smart. Never steal bad ideas unless you have a way to make them good. Cornell steals a bad idea and makes it worse. Bad thing number one.
Paul Cornell is not a tight plot kind of guy. Okay, no big problem. Loose plots are fine, if you can manage them the right way. However, Cornell doesn't do this. Instead we get lots of cliches and unfinished set pieces that start too late or end too early.
The other way to counteract loose plots is to have strong, or at least interesting characters. Cornell fails miserably on this part as well. Major Problem number one is that we get no insight into the Smith character, how he ticks, what he's thinking, except for a few lines that are repeated with slight differences. The rest of the characters have little motivation, and seem to act according to whatever manifesto agenda that Cornell is interested in promoting. For example, Alexander Shuttleworth, who is the quintessential horny old man (he hits on Bernice, for fuck's sake), becomes gay (in the fucking epilogue, of all places!!!!!) just so Cornell can have a token positive gay relationship in his book -- it smacks of tokenism and is blatantly insulting.
Even more insulting and annoying was one bit where Dr. Smith is singing an Isley Brothers song and his girlfriend Joan asks if the Isley brothers are a "n****r band." Bernice hears this comment and says nothing then, but later screams at Dr. Smith in an attempt to get him to become the Doctor once more that Joan is a racist. All right, Joan is racist -- which considering what period she comes from isn't much of a surprise. And Bernice, who is from the future and enlightened, calls her on it. What offended me is that there was no point for either brief line except for Cornell to show he's against racism. Fine, Cornell is against racism, which we all should be (DUH!), but the lines do fuck-all to advance the story and smack of token PC politics, worse than Shuttleworth's coming out of the closet.
The human and alien villains are bullies with little motivation -- see the most annoying Orman cliche besides companion shagging. Cornell has the bad aliens -- forerunners to the even more putrid Cavis and Gandar from Avalon -- kill children just to show how bad they are, only to have the chutzpah to have the human bullies try the same thing as well. The only two interesting characters are Joan, Smith's girlfriend, and Tim Dean, who starts to take on some of the Doctor's Time Lord physiology and personality. Of less said about Bernice "more annoying than New Ace and OrmanBlum Sam" Summerfield, the better. Her job is to basically spout more political manifesto and grate on the nerves whenever possible.
The characters, however, aren't the worst aspect of the novel, nor is the god-awful hippie political ideals. It's the schmaltzy, sappy-sentimental tone of the whole book. Instead of possibly tugging at the heartstrings, or going for true tragedy, Cornell rips them out and dumps more ham-fisted melodrama than the end of the movie Pay it Forward (avoid), or any Douglas Sirk film. This oppressive tone angered me to the point where I had to play the first six Black Sabbath albums to achieve some balance and finish the book without dancing on it.
As previously stated, I'm willing to admit that its me, that I just can't understand the beauty of Paul Cornell and his sappy, utopian ideals for Doctor Who, and that Human Nature is the best Doctor Who book of all time.....
Um, no.
If you really want to read a story about the Doctor really motivated by love and willing to do anything for it, then read Father Time. It's a similar concept, done much better, with a tighter plot, killer characterization, real emotion and no bad political agendas.
Avoid this book.
Supplement, 20/8/03
Why would I want to re-read a book I trashed?
It all started when I grabbed it off the shelf on the way to the laundromat. I meant to pick up Dead Romance and spend some time in the Larryverse. But, since I had managed to grab Human Nature instead, I felt obligated to give the book another go-round.
Um, as mentioned before, Paul Cornell's writing style doesn't grab me. There's something about his novels that cause lots of eye rolling and muttering of vulgarities. There's a feeling of sloppiness. Cornell tends to over-characterize some of his novel creations, while taking shortcuts with others. He sets up tragic scenarios and fails to let them culminate properly. And lastly, Cornell seems to play to his reader's sentiments instead of taking them along for a ride.
A glaring correction from the previous review -- Shuttleworth doesn't become gay in the epilouge. And it's Tim Dean, not Tom, who finds the pod. Humble apologies to Mr. Cornell and anyone who read the first review. (The whole thing is really awful, so it's best ignored.)
For the record, I'm not all that enamored with romances in any of my fictional entertainment pursuits. They tend to get my inner cynical git working overtime to spot the false notes and snort with smug contempt when I notice the hoary cliches. If you're going to do a love story in Who, it has to be exceptional.
The love story between John Smith and Joan Redfern was hokey to say the least. But, it worked well enough this time around to seem plausible. I still think the familial love of Father Time is stronger, and works better in a Who concept because the Doctor is much better as a Father/Uncle figure. However, Cornell does manage to come through with the tragic finale of this doomed romance. John Smith has to become the Doctor once again and give up Joan.
The big message of the book is an anti-war one. Subtle as a sledgehammer, too. Kids make for instant pathos, unless you're heartless. This could have driven me to Tourette-style vulgar shoutings, but I let it go. Messages are tricky things, and some authors are better at it than others. The OrmanBlum are worse at such things, and because it's more of a subplot than the romance, I was able to let it pass.
My big beef with the book this time around are the Aubertides. There's no excuse for characters this bad. I kept asking myself why Cornell thought he could get away with it. Cornell referred to them as "Robert Holmes nonsense" in an interview. Okay, does that mean you have to write them as such? I cheered when Apashia bought it not because she's a villain, but because I would be spared more of her annoying traits. The only semi-interesting one was Serif, and even he made me want to throw up in disgust. Part of my enjoyment of Love and War -- still Cornell's best by a long way -- was the strength of the Hoothi as a villain/monster.
One more problem. Cornell ruined a powerful ending by adding an epilogue that added a layer of touchy-feely goodness to a book as a way to allieviate the tragedy. The last line with Wolsey watching the Doctor weep in private over losing Joan may be way out of character, but it works! The epilogue with Richard surviving by having Dean save him and the bit at the memorial service really got on my tits. Tim has already found out that the future is not set in stone, why beat it over the reader's head with an epilogue whose only purpose is to say "Everything's all right. All the nice people live long happy lives, and the bullies get it in the end." ... although the bit with Greeneye the cow did cause me to grin for a second.
I should touch on Bernice Summerfield. Not as patronizing this time around, but the "wrinkly old racist" line was too much. Especially when later on, she tried to bend over backwards to approve of John Smith marrying Joan. The diary bits were the strongest in Human Nature. Most of the time, she just took up space.
John Smith gets the uber-characterization treatment. From a technical point, it's well structured, however, I still had a hard time engaging with him. I'm unsure why. Some things felt right -- the awkwardness around Joan, the sudden advancements in the relationship, the snogging -- but the permissiveness and indecision of the character bugged me. It might have been the point that a human version of the Doctor (especially this one) might be prone to waffling, but after a while, I wanted to give him a foot up the ass and tell him to make up his mind, one way or the other.
Okay, Human Nature isn't as bad as I thought it was. I still think that the flaws outweight the merits and in the end, Human Nature is not worthy of the praise and hype placed in its name.
A Review by Rob Matthews 14/8/02
Funny thing about Terrence Keenan's reviews - and I'm sure he won't mind me saying this, because he could probably say the same about mine - is that though I very often disagree with them, they're always amongst the first ones I click on to read. And I generally admire them because of their passion and because they go against the grain.
So I was surprised when I read his review of Human Nature to find myself in partial agreement - particularly in regard to the comparisons with Father Time, which Mike Morris has also commented on in his own review of that book. In addition, I've recently been discussing the matter a bit with both of them, so I guess this review was inevitable. Actually Terrence's review has given me some kind of angle to tackle this book from, because though I always liked Human Nature, with reservations, I was never able to assemble any coherent take on it.
I suspect now that that was actually because of the rather loose and blurry structure of the book. It's difficult for me to review. The best analogy I can come up with is that it's is like trying to reach into an impressionist painting and grasp hold of something solid. The book overall, its central premise, is a beautiful, great one. The Doctor becomes a normal man so that the normal man can learn to become The Doctor. The book is the greatest valentine to the worth of a children's TV hero that you could imagine. It's such a good idea that it almost completely overrides the details - most of us fans rather indulgently overlook the banality of the Aubergines, or whatever they're called -, and leaves you with a glowing sense of the essential worth of this fiction and its values.
And those I'll come back to shortly.
The point I'm trying to make here is that despite the brilliance of the central premise I've never quite seen it as a masterpiece of Who fiction, and Terrence's review alerted me as to why. Structurally it's a mess, full of set pieces that - as he put it - go on too long and end too quick. Purely in terms of structure and discipline I'd agree that Father Time is a superior work. But at bottom, I never escaped the feeling on reading Father Time that the idea behind it was 'let's do another Human Nature' - something the EDAs have in fact been doing big-scale following the events of Ancestor and Adventuress. Father Time might emulate some of the themes and emotional effect of Human Nature, and might do it in a more polished and well-plotted way, but the one thing it cannot do is beat the first book's originality. Cornell got there first, and that's why his work is the better one. Even if he does have a passage narrated from the POV of a bloody pussycat, and even if he does open the book with a quote from a review of a Prodigy gig.
(and in fact that's nowhere nears as bad as the 'Father Time: the Album' postscript to Parkin's book, which latches cynically and massively irritatingly onto the current eighties nostalgia fad which I utterly, utterly despise and which suggests to me that nature has pegged the human race for extinction and soon the world will belong to the roaches... whaddya mean 'digression'?)
Few people have commented on the setting of the book; England, 1914. Which is odd because I found it to be one of the most effective choices of place and time I've seen in a Doctor Who book, as good as those in Christmas on a Rational Planet and Set Piece, if not as thoroughly evoked. The story takes place at the eve of what is arguably the defining event of the twentieth century and the world we now live in, and features members of the suffragette and socialist movements. It's the perfect fable-like location for a 'rebirth' of the Doctor, a place - though slightly artificial and schematised - to root our modern values (or postmodern if you prefer , I'm not getting into that one).
Oh yes, and they're liberal values. We're getting into 'Big Lie' territory here.
Lawrence Miles' theory on the Cornell-sculpted NA worldview is pretty well-known, and one I'd largely agree with. In brief, the UK's government had for over a decade been a conservative one and as a totem of liberal values - the liberal values shared by most of his readership, championing diversity and co-operation -, the NA Doctor and the NA series were a reaction to their time, and hence the perfect Doctor Who stories for their time. All of that I agree with - the NAs were absolutely brilliant and I wouldn't still be taking an active interest in Doctor Who if it hadn't been for them. But I also know that they were of their time and wouldn't work any more today - that's no bad thing. They did everything they set out to do, and for me it's a case of a job well done; that rarest of things, 'fulfilled potential'.
Miles' problem with the 'Big Lie' - more in Kate Orman's work, in fact, than Cornell's - was that he saw the books as projecting the impression that the universe itself was on the side of the late twentieth-century liberal. This tendency I haven't really experienced in any of the NAs I've read, but then Miles was referring more to some of the later NAs, which are harder to get hold of.
Anyway, I wouldn't at first glance have thought 'The Big Lie' was much of an issue in this book. The Eternal Time is present, but doesn't represent the universe as a whole, or a God - any more than the Eternals Pain, Death and Stinky who turned up in No Future.
Miles' 'People Like Us' theory perhaps applies for those who don't like Human Nature, what with the aforementioned supporting cast of suffragettes and socialists and gays (oh my). Terrence Keenan mentioned "token PC politics" with regard to Shuttleworth's turning out to be gay. I was dismayed by this - not because it wasn't an interesting point, but because of the use of 'PC', the abbreviation of that awful phrase 'political correctness', which is and always has been a nebulous bogeyman phrase used by rightwingers to rubbish the values of people like me. It's a fucking propaganda term, and it's always annoyed me that it passed into common currency. For 'political correctness' read 'respect for other people'. That's really all it boils down to. That rightwingers think of this respect as some kind of pretension says something very disturbing about them.
(Obviously I'm not including Terrence in that, I just hate that phrase and what it implies)
Similarly, I'm not sure what this 'political manifesto' is that Bernice apparently spouts at every opportunity. All I can think of is that she shows support for the suffragette girl - well, yes, so would I. What's wrong with that?
I try to go along with the idea that Doctor Who should be apolitical (again, see Mike Morris on Father Time), but really I find it impossible. The Doctor was conceived as anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment character. Conservatism is about supporting the authority of the establishment. The Doctor champions open-mindedness and fights inequality, tyranny and repression. Conservatism is by its very nature close-minded and deferential to the kind of nonsense that creates inequality, tyranny and repression - forcing organised religion into schools is one example, Thatcher's section 28 is another. Toadying up to the Monarchy depite the surreal Monty Pythonesque ludicrousness of their existence is one more. This is a broad strokes argument, I suppose, but, yeah, broadly the Doctor seems to me inescapably left-of-centre and aligned to what we'll call liberal values. And yes, it's naive and bad for storytelling credibility when an author allow these values to spread from the characters to the Whoniverse itself. I don't think that happens in this book.
Terrence referred in particular to Joan's speaking about a "n***** band", and to Shuttleworth's 'coming out of the closet' in the epilogue (actually, it's earlier than that). He argues that Cornell uses the former only for the purpose of showing that he's not racist, and as such it's offensive, because condescending. Fair point, but I suspect that if Cornell hadn't put this bit in, I would have been the first one to complain about his rose-tinted vision of the past. Bernice gets angry about it because, well, you would. Yes, racism was prevalent back then, but it's hard to take the long view of the past when you're standing in the middle of it. For me, the comment and Bernice's reaction to it are careful inclusions. They're not dwelled on, but they're necessary. And Bernice's reaction is a character-based one rather than a Cornell lefty agenda ploy.
Neither do I think the revelation of Shuttleworth's sexuality is a case of the author suddenly deciding to turn a character gay. Homophobia was prevalent back then too, you know, hence the character's hetero-lech old rake act. Yes, you could cry tokenism, but on that logic no-one would ever be able to include any gay characters in Doctor Who books for fear of them being branded as such, or given far more analysis than the straight characters.
Which I'm doing right now, in fact, but only in response to a previous review.
My take on Human Nature, on the story itself, is that it expands the horizons of the Doctor's character considerably and is a highly effective and influential Doctor Who book. It's also important as part of the thematic arc of the NAs, fall and redemption. But it's no masterpiece. I said when I reviewed Love and War that Cornell's writing can often be clumsy and often beautiful. By comparison Human Nature tends more towards the former. That it's a very good book is due more to the overwhelming impression it leaves than the grace of the prose.
A Review by Andrew McCaffrey 9/6/03
When I first read Human Nature back in 1995 or 1996, I thought it was quite good. Not perfect, but quite good. Since the mid-90s, the book's reputation has done nothing but skyrocket. Finally declared as the greatest New Adventure in various polls and reviews, I fully expect to see it posited as the supreme work of English fiction by sometime in the next century.
Rereading it today (well, last week to be specific), I found that my opinion hadn't changed all that much. It's still a really good book with some outstanding sequences and genuine emotion. But it also contains some fairly blatant missteps. It's a shame that Paul Cornell didn't quite make his villains as interesting as his heroes, given that both factions are given huge amounts of screen time.
The storyline is very simple, very traditional in all but one major area. The Doctor decides to take a vacation. Weary with the weights and responsibilities of being the Intergalactic Man Of Mystery, he decides to create an artificial persona for himself (the hints of where his false memories come from are great fun), and places his consciousness into the human body of Dr. John Smith (his own body, after undergoing a gobbledygook process to temporarily rid it of its Gallifreyan heritage). While his own thoughts, experiences, and Time Lord know-how are placed into a container, a group of alien baddies arrives on Earth intending to steal the Doctor's essence for their own nefarious schemes.
Everyone who discusses this book eventually gets around to criticizing the alien Aubertides. I will not be breaking from convention. They really are pathetic adversaries. Actually, it would be more accurate to describe them as depressingly ordinary. While the Smith/Doctor storyline captivates and enthralls the reader, one is instantly jolted back to banality every time we're forced to continue with the Adventures Of The Irritating Aliens. And the biggest problem of all is that they're present and nauseating for so much of the book. Had they just appeared from time to time to remind us of the main Doctor Who practices, they wouldn't have been quite so annoying. (Unfortunately, Cornell would not learn from this lesson. Cavis and Gandar of Shadows of Avalon somehow manage to be much, much worse.)
Cornell also cheats a bit with his plotting. Fortunately, he's a strong enough writer to be able to keep the story moving fast enough, so that most of the stretches aren't quite as damning as they would be had they come from the pen of a lesser. Even so, there are some absolutely insane coincidences, people acting stupid just to move the plot along, and places where the action stops completely dead for some silly and preaching moralizing.
I apologize for having spent so much time taking about the portions of Human Nature I found to be irritating, because overall, even with its flaws, this is still a damned good book. The progression of Dr. John Smith back into the Doctor figure is extraordinarily well done. His relationship with a rather mundane Earth woman is nicely understated. I loved the fact that while I (and Benny) found her to be slightly haughty and grating, I could still understand completely how Smith started falling for her.
What Cornell does with the Doctor here is absolutely fantastic. Seeing Smith slowly but surely regaining his essential characteristics is mind-blowing. The way that Cornell places the crucial Doctor qualities into another secondary character is subtly cool. The final thirty pages are gorgeous.
In other places, the book also scores a bull's-eye. I read this one straight after Sanctuary, and the difference in writing couldn't have been any more obvious. While the previous tome had dense prose that I found difficult and distracting, the pages in Human Nature just flew by. The words and phrases can seem as light as a feather, but can be utterly devastating when need be. It's like an expensive, rare, and pleasant wine. A few sips are absolute heaven, and after a good long session, you find yourself knocked on your ass.
As I said, I liked Human Nature despite its fairly obvious flaws. On the other hand, I think somewhere out there is a version of this book written entirely as extracts from the dairies of Benny and Dr. John Smith, keeping the character stuff even more at the forefront, and banishing the Aubertides to well-deserved obscurity. That version may very well be the greatest Doctor Who story of all time. But that's not the version we have here, which isn't even the best of Paul Cornell. Yet it's still quite good and definitely worth reading.
Perfect book to begin with by David Lotito 2/4/04
::written in April 2003::
After watching most of the Doctor Who episodes, and after disassociating myself with fandom, a spark still held onto me; to try something different with the Doctor. Not only that, but to also experience a format that I've been ignoring, and a story that seems to break many conventions and hidden taboos. When I decided to give in and start reading a Doctor Who book, I didn't expect a story to change my view of the character. I didn't expect a story to make me fall in love with the character all over again. That could be part of the magic; The Doctor is full of everything you don't expect.
The book in question is Human Nature by Paul Cornell. It involves the Seventh Doctor, and Bernice Summerfield, taking a holiday, in 1914, England. This time, he decides to become human in body and mind, and taking the guise of "John Smith", he also becomes a teacher at a private military school. He manages to fall in love, and notice the little things in nature, while taking a break from himself; trying to find his true self.
The school's cadets are portrayed well as hazing and training are depicted. I especially love a scene where a straw dummy is being shot. The poetry is so alive in some places, and so is the brutal honesty. Bernice seems to be along for the ride, until she stumbles across the Aubertides, who are after the Doctor's essence that's being kept in a hidden pod. What follows is a brutal depiction of what war is really like; people dying in graphic detail, its consequences, and full of suspenseful drama and action. It also shows what being in love is really like, and being human. John Smith is shown to have weaknesses like anybody does; him dropping to the ground and weeping after the Aubertides take "Joan" is a perfect example.
The story itself goes beyond the plot and its concept. It's essentially finding one's self amidst rules and patterns, and changing everything to do it. It's about taking chances and risking everything, and in this case, to find meaning, at least. It's a book that's fueled my interest in the Doctor Who books, but it also has renewed my literary spark, and made my intellect shine brighter. It's a story in the series that doesn't follow the rules, and does it well. If nothing else, it's a perfect story to interest others in the Doctor Who books. Have fun reading; I know I did.
::written in Feburary 2004::
I've slowly became more involved in fandom, bit by bit. Since
Human Nature, I've read
A Review by Mike Morris
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Having raved quite incoherently
about the Cornell worldview in the guise of a
review of Father's Day, it occurred to me that it was long past time I
tackled this book. Which is, to my mind, something of an exemplar of Paul
Cornell's Who fiction. The good and bad; the sublime and the
substandard. All in here.
The notion of Cornell actually having a "worldview" is important,
because not many Doctor Who writers have expressed one in their
books. Lawrence Miles (the anti-Cornell, really) leaps immediately to mind
as someone who does, but a "pure" storyteller like Justin Richards doesn't
and a writer of sublime entertainments like Lloyd Rose doesn't either.
More surprisingly, even someone like Kate Orman doesn't really incorporate
her entire belief system into books like Paul Cornell does, and after the
extreme darkness of her early NAs wears off she often seems to be overtly
aping Paul Cornell and not quite pulling it off. Oddly, given that Orman
is a more gifted constructor of a plot (and a better prose writer), her
books frequently feel looser - even though Cornell does include silly
quotes, does put in a moral message here and there, and does spin his
books around some of the daftest plots in the universe ever.
That "tightness" in Human Nature comes, I think, from its central
question. What elevates Paul Cornell above his imitators (he's generally a
good but uneven prose writer) is his ability to work out exactly what
question his books are addressing, and then resolves it with the minimum
of fuss. He comes across as a highly analytical writer who's a stern
self-critic (he has been openly negative about No
Future and The Shadows of Avalon). Human
Nature's central conceit can be expressed in one sentence - can an
ordinary person become the Doctor? - and this makes it read almost as a
parable. What makes Human Nature so satisfying, in spite of
numerous flaws, is that the reader knows that each event is going towards
resolving this question, and that the entire story has been constructed to
give us that answer. The answer is "yes", of course, which is both
predictable and uplifting; but it gives rise to some really breathtaking
moments as the confused bumbler that is John Smith becomes someone truly
heroic. Take out the initial passages with Bernice going on the piss and
this could, in fact, play very easily to a non-Who reading
audience. In fact - and I mentioned this in my review of the first three 9DAs -
it's a really wonderful children's book, much more comparable to Harry
(bloody) Potter than, say, Damaged Goods or The Left-Handed Hummingbird. That isn't faint praise -
His Dark Materials is also a children's book (oh, all right then,
trilogy), let's not forget, and that's got a thing or two to say to an
adult audience. Besides, Human Nature sets itself up as overtly a
children's book; morality is black and white, the prose is simple, and
characters are drawn with fat lines. It's these childlike elements that
makes its nastier moments so effective - exploding students, H-bombs,
Constance stew, tumours on the bowel and ritual hangings are horrific
here, whereas elsewhere they might come across as tasteless comedy.
The question of whether the Big Central Question is actually just PC
soapboxing is quite important here. This book has been criticised because
the author "introduces his own agendas", which are a damn sight too
preachy. Hmm, hum. There's something in it - the best example might be the
Alexander-is-gay revelation, which isn't for anything. Not that it
has to be, of course, but it's revealed in a sort of fanfare gosh-wow
moment as if the author thinks he's saying something important. It's
difficult to figure out what; so the guy's gay, so bloody what? It serves
no storytelling purpose, even if Alexander and Hadelman are rather sweet,
and in a book so focused it's clearly an indulgence.
And yet I can't claim to be bothered all that much, simply because it's
so clearly an indulgence. It doesn't detract from the core of the book
because it's so obviously not a part of it. What annoys me, still, is when
the term "PC" is attached to this sort of thing; I can't think of any
phrase more bullying, to be honest. "Politically correct" actually started
out as meaning deliberately obscure linguistics that stink of fear of the
law courts, such as saying "vertically challenged" instead of "short".
It's now almost a truism to denigrate someone as a PC pinko if they object
to anything on moral grounds. Fact is that most "PC agendas" are, in fact,
quite right, and dismissing them offhand is bloody irritating. I speak as
someone who hates, absolutely hates, to be preached at (not averse to
doing the preaching, of course - a double standard's better than no
standard, I say)...
...but Human Nature doesn't preach at us at any point, on
this or any other topic. There are no homophobes who get their
comeuppance, there's no pink pride message. There's just a couple in it
who are gay. The fact that Paul Cornell seems to have included them
because he feels he should is what makes it seem like an agenda, but it's
not pushily done. And if we're talking agendas - well, what else should
authors do? Books are for people who want to say something. If Cornell
feels he should include a gay couple, well I see it as an irrelevance...
but I see the Big Flying Saucer in Father Time as an
irrelevance too, and what's more it's a silly one that goes on and on
forever. In fact, that's every bit as agenda-driven - it's Lance Parkin
introducing his agenda that Doctor Who Isn't About Agendas - but
it's achieved by introducing something hackneyed and crap that sabotages
the plot and ducks numerous questions that the first two-thirds of the
book raised, whereas Cornell introduces his "agenda" by creating a rather
touching middle-aged couple in love with each other. What's more,
Cornell's agenda matters; Parkin's doesn't. I fail to see why Parkin's
version isn't a thousand times shitter.
Anyway, to get back to the point and continue the Father Time
comparison; Human Nature has all sorts of irrelevant asides, but it
remains blatantly clear that's exactly what they are, and it's obvious
what we're talking about. Whereas, if anyone can precisely define
Father Time in a sentence I will buy them several pints next time
they're in Dublin (Define it to my satisfaction, that is; important
disclaimer there). In fact, while it's easy to say Human Nature is
"preachy" and Father Time has a plot, I'd see it more
that Cornell knows what he's saying and his book is structured around
that, while Parkin doesn't and hence has to introduce a daft plot to
disguise his book's lack of clarity. Both books have asides, but Cornell's
feel like asides whereas Parkin's feel like confusions - you say silly
death-balloon, I say silly positronic brain.
Cornell, of course, doesn't do himself any favours here. His claim that
the "nigger band" bit is an anti-racist message (that's a second-hand
quote, but I trust Rob Matthews, I do) is patronising and daft because,
let's face it, everyone but Ron Atkinson knows that "nigger" is beyond the
pale (esoteric football reference #742). But we should be judging the
book, not the writer - writers are often the worst critics of their own
work - and no matter what Paul Cornell thinks he said, I can't for
the life of me see this as soapboxing. Joan doesn't get taught the
wrongness of her views and Bernice does not come to see things in context.
There's no lesson, there's just a depiction of the character's attitudes
that are used to create a tension - and that's not preaching, that's
storytelling. This reads as him portraying a very unremarkable woman in a
warts-and-all way, and Bernice reacts because, well, how could you not?
The "nigger band" was actually a moment when I thought phew, well done
there Paul, at least you're not letting the reader get comfortable.
I dribbled on about this in my spectacularly
incoherent Father's Day piece, but hopefully I'll express my view of
"sanitising" more clearly here. Paul Cornell very carefully avoids
sanitising his worlds in all his good books, certainly this one, and in the Father's Day rant I confused "sanitised"
with "optimistic." His view is that "there's always good in everyone, if
you know where to look", as he said in Goth Opera
(one of his weakest books, but that's another story). That doesn't mean
things aren't ugly - in an era when the 80s are the kitsch decade of
choice, Father's Day didn't have a single Miami
Vice reference and was much more recognisably the England of The Boys From
the Blackstuff. Or, in what I promise will be the very last comparison
with Father Time, in Human Nature, the most
beautiful image Cornell describes is the remains of a school after an
atomic explosion. In Father Time, Lance Parkin turns
everything into rose petals. I don't have to spend long asking myself
which is the daring image and which is the hackneyed one. Since watching
the clichéd pap that was American Beauty I have a deep-held moral
conviction that Rose Petals Can Fuck Right Off anyway, so maybe my buttons
are just being pushed, but the fact remains; Cornell is willing to get his
hands dirty in a way few other authors are. I suspect this is why he does
actually get under my skin with the touchy-feely stuff, because he goes to
great lengths to make his worlds real and mucky. The fact that John Smith
falls for a rather dull woman who speaks offensively about foreigners (I
wouldn't call Joan racist as such) is an important example, and by no
means the only one.
This is what Kate Orman can't quite manage, no matter how admirable
many of her other qualities are. Her worlds are much more middle-class and
her people aren't as dirty as Paul Cornell's - Cornell made Rose's clumsy,
play-away Dad the hero, but Orman's heroes tend to be middle-class
pretend-hippies with driven ideals. Orman actually likes Sam.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's hard to shake the feeling that Kate
Orman's range of good guys are the sort of people she'd like to hang
around with; Cornell's frequently aren't. He can drift that way, but he
generally avoids it or acknowledges it (as in the Trisha-friendship in Timewyrm: Revelation, where Ace realises it was her own
preconceptions making Trisha such a bitch). Cornell's heroic couple in Timewyrm: Revelation are resolutely ordinary people,
and I don't think it's unintentional in Love and War
that Jan is a bit of a dick. In Human Nature, Cornell plays the
same game with Rocastle. He starts him out as a bullying character and
Rocastle continues to do some nasty things, but by investing him with a
massive degree of self-doubt we're given a great level of sympathy for
this character. In fact, it's Smith and Joan (bad joke there Paul) who
become the bullying characters as they sit blissed-out in a field and
discuss Rocastle in bitchy, one-dimensional terms that we as the reader
have seen to be wholly unfair.
And here's where Human Nature shows real balls, poses real
questions, shows an author being hard on himself. Rocastle eventually
sacrifices himself in a way that neither Smith nor Joan would ever have
the courage to go through with - effectively the author turns on his
heroes, showing them up as judgemental and mean-spirited. They don't come
to see their error, which is a good example of Cornell's restraint; to the
reader it's very obvious that Rocastle's self-sacrifice is completely in
the man's character, but Smith and Joan speculate that he had become a bit
Doctorish. At this point, they seem like complete assholes. And, as Smith
might be seen as someone with similar outlooks to Paul Cornell, we're
effectively seeing Paul question his own moral stance. What right do I
have to look down my nose on people like that? Why is it that people whom
I wouldn't ever like can do heroic deeds that I couldn't? Am I, in fact, a
preachy middle-class pussy? Paul Cornell might dislike people like
Rocastle, but that doesn't prevent him from empathising with him and he
still gets to be a hero.
Or take the setting, say. It's Innocent-England-Before-The-Great-War
times one million, and it's really terribly pretty in its country lane
way. But Cornell never falls into the trap of portraying this as an
idyllic wonderland upon which the Great War dawned unbidden; it's clear
that the beautiful setting is actually what gave birth to WWI, and
that sort of nastiness is streaked through a book that's bursting with
optimism. The scene with the Gatling gun is the obvious shocker, and
Rocastle's description of the two types of bullet is very chilling. The
notion that the war "was won on the playing fields of Eton" is given a
twist here, with the school unapologetically drawn as a hellhole run on
the basis of a horrible social elitism (compare this questioning to the
oh-so-magical Hogwarts, where every good child must win points for their
house and it's seen as acceptable that a magic hat tells twelve year olds
whether they're inherently good, evil, or just a worthless mediocrity).
This a setting where the apparently nice patterns of society make evil
possible. This is also the plot (the Aubertides descending on the village
just as the war will), and the central character (the Doctor is very nice
but Is He Really?). This is the sort of structure that leads to proper
Now, the Aubertides. They're crap of course... but well, actually...
yes, I rather like them and I think they're very appropriate.
No, really.
Again, Paul Cornell has shot himself in the foot here. His comment that
the Aubertides were "silly Robert Holmes villains" is what really rankles
with people I think, and quite rightly too. I don't know whether he just
tends to talk himself down, but this is disingenuous. The fact that Cavis
'n' Gandar in The Shadows of Avalon are cut from
the same cloth would seem to indicate that he's making some sort of point,
even if he's not making it well enough for it to really work.
It comes down to Cornell-morality again. In his world, characters are
fundamentally good provided they really believe in something, anything. So
long as they have that level of thought, Cornell can excuse their deeds -
the people might be misguided, corrupted, screwed-up or just plain nasty,
but they aren't evil. But his out-and-out villains, the ones that don't
get redeemed, are the people who don't believe in anything -
they're people who mock believers. It's understandable, because Paul
Cornell's books are so bloody easy to mock and to bully. A good example is
in Timewyrm: Revelation, when the Doctor recycles
his "Look me in the eye, end my life" line from the series - a line that
The Discontinuity Guide singles out as summarising
all of Doctor Who - and is greeted with laughter. "Well you said
it!" says Chad Boyle, and cuts him down.
The Aubertides have reached some sort of diabolical amoral Nirvana
where they find everything funny. They're the sort of people who
find the Doctor a laughable figure. Now, the reason that they sit uneasily
in the Doctor Who canon is that Doctor Who's villains tend
to be fanatics - they tend to people who really, really believe in
something, who take everything a damn sight too seriously. Cornell's
villains are those who take nothing seriously - not death, not
destruction, not morality, nothing. Taking a religious fanatic as an
example, Paul Cornell will find some seed of goodness in there, and he has
a belief that if he can get the person to really see the error of their
ways then the goodness will win out. Whereas with villains like the
Aubertides, and later Cavis 'n' Gandar, they have seen the error of their
ways a hundred times over and just don't care. The Doctor - particularly
the McCoy Doctor - can tie fanatics up in knots with a few well-chosen
words and let their own actions destroy themselves, all without breaking
sweat. But if the Doctor's way of winning is to win without violence,
without resorting to evil, then these villains are the toughest
proposition of the lot. A bad guy like Kane was easy to defeat; look up a
few star charts, have a chat, and pish-posh he melts himself. The
Aubertides aren't that stupid, so much so that it's hard to think of a
villain that would be harder to defeat here. Cornell sets himself the task
of defeating the bad guys without guns, and he doesn't cheat on his reader
by making it easy. The Aubertides aren't unstable, or mad, or fanatical,
or stupid, and they don't make mistakes. They are very, very dangerous.
This threat is one thing that makes Smith's turmoil work. The other is
the peripheral presence of the Doctor, someone dark and distant who would
view the struggle in cold, inhuman terms. By being superficially similar
to McCoy's Doctor (not the New Adventures Doctor perhaps, but certainly
the televised version), Smith emphasises the otherness of the Doctor. His
slow realisation that, say, he can't just trundle up to the Aubertides and
give them what they want should be laughable. It's not. It works because
he doesn't seem to have any other option; he can't win by force, and the
other choice is to surrender himself to someone who's unknown and doesn't
seem sympathetic. Instead it feels like something working out the truth
from first principles; taking maxims that we all know to be true (and
hence don't think about, and hence can conveniently forget whenever we
want to bomb a little country full of brown people) and actually
determining where they come from.
And that is brilliant, brilliant children's literature. Ultimately,
that's the highest compliment I can pay Human Nature; it is a
thoroughly brilliant children's book. It has a high level of discipline,
it is very thoughtful, it's well-structured, it's shocking and it's very
emotionally honest. The plot hinges on something a bit silly, but
everything else is worked through with unflinching honesty. We get our
happy ending, but it works because - and this is where Cornell's
unsanitised worldview is so important to the mix - it's always possible
that the worst will happen, and we frequently believe it will. When
Hadelman is dying in a field at the book's end, I really did think he was
going to die. So when he didn't, I cried with joy.
And unlike "adult" fiction, children's literature simply has to be that
good. Kids don't put up with the sort of crap we do. 9DA writers, please
take note.
Fair;s fair, a book like The Adventuress of
Henrietta Street is playing with more complex, more difficult themes.
But the measure of Human Nature is that it can stand comparison
with some of the best non-Who books in its field. It's not His Dark
Materials, not by a long chalk, but it is a really fantastic children's
book. It works because, while the morality it espouses might be corny,
it's not easily achieved and it's so damn right. That's why it^Ňs got
something for us grownups too, something important.
A bit like a certain children's TV series I can think of, then.
If You Read Only One Doctor Who Novel Let This Be The
One by Matthew Kresal
This is Human Nature: The basis for the revived TV's series two
part story Human Nature/The Family of Blood.
Written by Paul Cornell and published back in May 1995, this novel has
earned a reputation as one of the best Doctor Who novels ever.
Having read quite a few of them, I'm willing to go one step further:
Human Nature is the best Doctor Who novel ever written.
Human Nature is (to paraphrase a famous quote from the series)
far more then just another Doctor Who story. It is a strong story
about love, war and what makes us human. One of the reasons for this is
because it's a novel full of real characters, not just one- or
two-dimensional cutouts. This is especially true of the at-times nearly
malevolent seventh Doctor, who becomes a human being and leaves his
companion Professor Summerfield having to save him.
While the novel features a fair amount of action and typical
science-fiction material, the story has a love story running through it.
That is the love between the humanized seventh Doctor (Dr. John Smith) and
Joan Redfern. While it might initially seem out of place, Cornell makes it
fit. Cornell creates a realistic relationship between the two and whenever
they're together the pages really do light up. In fact, Smith and Joan are
the literal heart and soul of Human Nature. It is their
relationship and its climax that really make this novel stand out.
The novel's only real flaw is its villains who are a bit of a joke for
the most part. The Aubertide shapeshifters are clumsy to say the least and
very rarely (if at all) do they have menace. That said, they have a great
moment in chapter six, but for the most part Cornell drops the ball in
terms of the villains and in turn creates the novel's only real problem.
Don't let that flaw deter you though. This novel is what science
fiction is at its best: a morality tale in a very different dressing. To
put it another way: if you read only one Doctor Who novel, let this
be the one you read.


text:
E|------ Daniel Kaczmarczyk ------------ B|-------------------------------------- G|--- Guitar Lessons ------------------- D|-------------------------------------- A|-- www.facebook.com/dkguitarlessons -- E|--------------------------------------
Tune your low e string one tone lower - from e to d. Changing the tunning in that manner gives you a lot of new opportunities to play notes that were unreachable, or uncomfortable to play before.
If you have electronic tuner it's really sipmle to do that. Just plug the guitar and detune low e to d. if you can't use a tuner, here you can read here how to do it.
Now, let's talk a little about the opportunites that dropped d tuning gives us.
One of the most important advantages of tuning to drop d is that you can simply play power chords on the 3 lowest strings using only one finger. This allows you to make really fast, heavy sounding riffs using very easy shapes, that go like this;
e\------------------ b\------------------ g\------------------ d\-3--5-0----------- a\-3--5-0----------- e\-3--5-0----------- f5 g5 d5 etc
If you are familiar with using the "pedal tone" when creating your own riffs, instead of jus one note - low e in e standard tuning, in drop d you can use the whole d5 chord, like this:
e\----------------------- b\----------------------- g\-----5-7-8-7----5-7-8-7 d\-0000-0-0---0000-0-0--- a\-0000-0-0---0000-0-0--- e\-0000-0-0---0000-0-0---
Drop D tuning is made for heavy music genres. So if you are into heavy music, consider using it in your songs! But mind my advice - if you are used to E standard tuning, remember that the scale,chord and arpeggio shapes that include 6th string are not the same as before. It sounds obvious, and it is obvious but when you lose your focus, you can easily forget about that and you will sound greatly out-of-tune. Here I'll provide you a fretboard map with notes of drop d tuning.
|E|F| |G| |A| |B|C| |D| |E| |B|C| |D| |E|F| |G| |A| |B| |G| |A| |B|C| |D| |E|F| |G| |D| |E|F| |G| |A| |B|C| |D| |A| |B|C| |D| |E|F| |G| |A| |D| |E|F| |G| |A| |B|C| |D| 0 3 5 7 9 12 (fret numbers)
This may help you orientate around new tuning!
I hope that this article helped you in going familiar with drop D tuning. I wish you best in playing in dropped D and writing some great riffs! Rock on, my guitar playing friends!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
14th May 2007, 08:33 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 24
Which board between S-Type 126 & K-96?
My husband and I are intermediate surfers and Starboard fans. We surf in the Netherlands on a quite choppy salt water lake (Grevelingenmeer).
At 63 kg for me the switch from the S-Type 126 2006 to the K-96 2006 is easy. At 89 kg, my husband thinks he might need a board in between for when the wind is not steady. As a matter of fact he thinks he cannot get back when the wind drops, although he didn't try this out yet. My questions: Cannot he get back on the K-96 when the wind drops? What is the real volume of the K-96? Which additional board would be more suited? A K-106/107 or a S-Type 104 or 115? We like the Kombat for when it's really heavy chop although we both prefer the crispy feeling of the S-Types. What is the real volume of these boards? |
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The Department of English offers major programs leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree. Each of these programs develops communication and critical thinking skills, which are highly valued in graduate schools, professional programs, and businesses in a variety of settings.
Students choosing the B.A. in English may opt for a concentration in either literature or writing. The literature option provides students with the broadest possible perspective of diverse literary traditions. The writing concentration balances literary study with the theory and practice of writing.
When combined with a sequence of courses in Teacher Education, the degree in English leads to the Bachelor of Arts Degree and teacher certification at the secondary level (grades seven through twelve).
The Department also offers a minor in English.
English majors with a concentration in either Literature or Writing and Publication MUST have a minor. This minor may be any area other than English; choices open for the minor include Gender Studies and Journalism, as well as many other fields.
The Department sponsors a study abroad program to London through ENGL 4437, Literary London, offered during Maymester. Additionally, students may take advantage of other study abroad opportunities through the University System of Georgia.
The mission of the Department is enhanced by the Writing Program, which includes both the first-year writing sequence and the writing concentration and supports the University's Writing Across the Curriculum Program.
The faculty of the Department of English assist students in planning their academic program of study and in choosing courses which comply with degree requirements for the selected major. Students are responsible for completing the baccalaureate plan of study during their junior year.
If you encounter issues accessing content or using this site, please contact the website administrator at email@example.com.


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We attended FailCon this week & met some amazing entrepreneurs & startups. Thanks to Cassie Phillips for hosting yet another great conference where we get to hear authentic stories about failure leading to success. Check out the mashup below includes Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures; Brian Wong, Kiip; Gagan Biyani, Udemy; Roger Dickey, Product X; Joe Gebbia, Airbnb; Christina Hosberry, Facebook; Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics; Ethan Bloch, Flowtown; Peter Gardner, Wavepoint Ventures; David Weekly, PBworks; Travis Kalanick, Uber & Stephanie Wilkes, Catch
Thanks to Charles van Norman @fractalg for photographs
Related articles
- Keen On … Failure Is The Ultimate Rebirth (TCTV) (techcrunch.com)
- Keen On … The Greatest Entrepreneurs Are Born To Deal With Failure (TCTV) (techcrunch.com)
- FailCon interview: Avoiding and learning from mistakes, successfully (zdnet.com)
- Failure is the Best Way to Learn How to Succeed (ezebis.com)
- Vinod Khosla: Lessons from the fail (news.cnet.com)
- Data Mashups in R (i-programmer.info)
- Comic-Con 2011 Cosplay Fails (poorlydressed.failblog.org)
- Keen On… Chris DeWolfe: What I Learned From The MySpace Failure (TCTV) (techcrunch.com)
- Zombies Mashup by Eclectic Method (laughingsquid.com)
- Zombie Mashup of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)


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Monoprice Cherry MX Black Gaming Keyboard w/2 Port USB Hub and Headset/Mic Jacks $66.15 + SH
Last edited by Worker; 11-21-2012 at 12:19 PM..
Reason: add price
We've heard your feedback and are continuing to build a better Slickdeals. Click here to check out the updated site.
Use this link from their e-mail:
http://www.monoprice.c Price shows up discounted on the right of the normal ($90) price. Looks like from the url: cpncd=earlybird12 so that coupon probably also works. |
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Teacher Tips for Countdown to Migration Print-and-Fold Instructions for Booklet version
Make Connections: • (Page 1) Do you think we humans are affected by migratory restlessness? Do you feel "a change in the air" in fall? Does it affect your behavior? Critical Thinking. Discuss: •If weather were perfect for flying each day, the migration could be made in about 16 days. However, it will likely take at least two months. What unexpected things could happen during the journey south? (Poor flying weather that causes delays; storms that damage the pens or harm the birds; mechanical problems with the planes; difficult obstacles for the birds, such as high mountain ranges or noisy interstate highways; a lost bird that requires delay for search and rescue. All these things have happened in the previous ultralight-led migrations.) Students may wish to search through Highlights reports from past migrations, found here.
Archives and Lessons: (Page 1) What weather conditions are they waiting for? Explore more with pilot Joe Duff's weather checklist. (Page 2) How much does this migration cost? How much is a 50-lb. bag of crane chow? How much are treats each week for Robo-crane to dispense? How much to fill fuel tanks and buy a day of flying time for four ultralights? Make up math challenges like these with facts listed here. (Page 3) What signs tell the pilot that a crane is getting tired in flight? On this page find pilot Joe Duff's answer, and see a video clip of a tired bird dropping out. (Page 4) Play the contact call for students. Do they think the birds will be ready when departure day arrives? This is a good time to review the Meet the Flock chart for this year's chicks. What's the age range between the oldest and the youngest members of the flock? How many males? How many females? Which cranes seem most dominant? NOTE: At later stages of training, the team tries to spend very little time in contact with the cranes to ease the transition to wild, so "behavior notes" are fewer. (Page 5) How does the ultralight aid the birds in flight? Pilot Deke Clark explains in a 67-second audio clip, with five questions to guide listening before the clip. View a video clip of a crane flying in the sweet spot. Also, learn more about flight order in this lesson. (Page 6) Download and print our Comparing Migrations chart. To learn more about team members, see Meet the Team. Now you're all set for migration to begin!
Journey North is pleased to feature this educational adventure made possible by the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP).
Copyright 1997-2015 Journey North. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us Search


text: GALLERIES Aretha Franklin 0 294 Back to Top ▲ Aretha Franklin Aretha Franklin Aretha Franklin Pictures AskMen Editors Share on Facebook Share on Twitter 0 Shares Her '60s recordings for Atlantic gained her the title "Lady Soul." Her version of "Respect" (1967) became an anthem during the time of black activism and women's liberation. She's had countless hit records since that time, including a full-fledged comeback in the 1980s, and is still regarded as the diva's Diva. Continue reading Aretha Franklin's profile. Next Page gallery Comments Show Comments More Like This Celeb Galleries Randy Jackson Read More Celeb Galleries Joss Stone Read More Promoted Around the Web Special Features Special Feature From Dating To Fitness, Over 75 Ways Men Are Winning 2015 Read More Special Feature 50 Ways To Look Better Than You Do Now. Smooth Up, Man. Read More


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Target Recalls Kids' Stools Due To Falling Risk
Mega-retailer Target is recalling 69,000 children's stools that could collapse causing injury.
Best Grilling Gadgets For Your Summer Cookouts
Everyone longs for summer, barbecues, and cookouts. Whatever your specialty, there are grilling gadgets galore to make the job easier and even more fun.
Don't Drink From That Garden Hose!
Add taking a drink of water straight from the garden hose to the list of traditional activities that it turns out might be hazardous.
Target Recalls Children's Sleepwear Due To Fire Risk
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Looking For Holiday Shopping Deals And Ideas? Look No Further
Many major retailers including Target and Walmart released their Black Friday deals nearly two weeks in advance. Stay up-to-the-minute on Black Friday deals in metro Detroit here!
Target, Walmart To Open Thanksgiving For 'Black Friday' Shopping
About 1.4 million people work for Walmart — and the site, and other union affiliated networks, are urging those workers to walk off the job on Thanksgiving.
Disney-Themed Fleece Hoodies Sold At Target Recalled For Lead
Thousands of Disney-themed fleece hoodies and t-shirt sets sold last year at Target stores are being recalled because they contain excessive levels of lead.
Dog Treats Sold At Target Stores Recalled Due To Salmonella Risk
Dog treats sold at Target stores in Michigan and nationwide are being recalled because they could be contaminated with Salmonella.
Father's Day Fashion Musts – Helping Dad Not Dress Like A Dad
With the right clothing, men can look good at any age. Here are some fashion tips to help dad spruce up the wardrobe.
Best Department Stores Around Detroit
Everything you need under one roof: That's the department store promise at such Detroit locales as Nordstrom's, Parisian, Macy's, Target and Neiman Marcus.


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Rustlewood Resort
Rustlewood rests on a point with eight cottages nestled along the shoreline of Planting Ground Lake with views worth the drive. Whether you rent one or multiple cottages, each is unique and offers various amenities that will add to your north woods experience. Bed linens, a fully stocked kitchen and outside grill are provided with each cottage. Many who frequent Rustlewood, launch their own boats for fun and fishing on the water but if you don't own a boat, the resort can provide your pier with a 14' aluminum boat. During your stay, Rustlewood Resort has a little of everything for everyone. There is a fish cleaning house for the anglers, a small sandy beach and play area for the little ones and a floating raft off the main dock for anyone who feels like jumping in. We have our own little island where one can read a book on the swing or just take in the view of the landscape and wildlife that inhabits the north woods.
- On Water
Number of Bedrooms
- 2 Bedrooms
On-site Cabins/Cottages Amenities
- Boat Rentals
Cabin Amenities
- Smoking Rooms Available
Things To Do: Near Rustlewood Resort
Watercraft Sales, Inc.
Three Lakes - 1.11 miles away
Three Lakes Power Sports & Four Seasons Marine
Three Lakes - 1.13 miles away
TNT Speedway
Three Lakes - 1.44 miles away
Thunder Marsh Wildlife Area
Three Lakes - 1.49 miles away
Nicolet Forest Tour
Three Lakes - 1.49 miles away
Nicolet Forest Wheel-A-Way Tour
Three Lakes - 1.49 miles away
Three Lakes Snowmobiling
Three Lakes - 1.49 miles away
Three Eagle Trail
Three Lakes - 1.49 miles away
Giant White Pine Grove State Natural Area
Three Lakes - 1.49 miles away
Three Lakes Center for the Arts & Theater
Three Lakes - 1.59 miles away


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The first full-length biography of one of hockey's - and Canada's - most influential forces, Conn Smythe.
While the story of the Toronto Maple Leafs has been told many times, there has never been a full biography of the man who created, built and managed the team, turning it from a small-market collection of second-rate players into the hockey and financial powerhouse that dominated Canadian sports and created a collection of Canadian icons along the way. From the 1920s to the mid-1960s, Conn Smythe was one of the best-known, highest-profile figures in the country - irascible, tempestuous, outspoken and controversial. He not only constructed a hockey team that dominated the league for long stretches, but was critical to the growth and shaping of the NHL itself. By building Maple Leaf Gardens and hiring Foster Hewitt to fill Canada's living rooms with weekly broadcasts, he turned Saturday night into hockey night, creating institutions and habits that became central to Canada's character and remain with us today.
Smythe's story is much deeper and richer than the tale of a cantankerous hockey owner. Smythe fought in both world wars, fighting at Ypres and Passchendaele in the first war and landing at Normandy in the second. He was wounded in both and spent two years as a POW in a German camp after being shot down in 1917. He grew up in poverty and vowed to escape the life that was so incredibly hard on his family. Smythe was active in politics and ignited a national crisis over conscription that split the Liberal government in two and brought Mackenzie King to the brink of resignation.
This book tells the life of one of the country's great characters, a man who helped shape and define us and who left behind national habits and institutions that continue to lay at the heart of what makes Canada, Canada.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Last week I popped on over to Redmond to have a chat with the guys at Microsoft on the future of Visual C++, MFC, and the new .NET world. Instead of presenting a point list of what we can expect in the future, I wanted to give you guys a taste of what a visit to Redmond is like, and I'm dead keen on having feedback from you on your own personal experiences.
A quick Thanks goes to Dundas Software and Microsoft for making this trip possible.
Microsoft rolled out a bevy of Managers to talk us through .NET and the future directions of the company. Those we met with included:
Some names have been withheld to protect the innocent, but also mainly because the they change jobs so quickly that the correspondence between titles and names is fairly fluid. Actually, the teams at Microsoft are changing so rapidly that even people working closely with some of these teams need to look up the latest listings to see who they should be talking to.
The thing that became very apparent while talking to these guys and girls was that they know their stuff. To the core. Not only were they intimately familiar with what they were working on, they knew what was going on in other projects. But not only that. Not only did they know their stuff, they were passionate about it. These guys really enjoy and believe in what they are doing. It's contagious. You come away from a meeting with these guys thinking 'Yeah - this stuff is great!', and it takes an effort to refocus and regain perspective on the whole initiative and look at it impartially.
The thing is, everything that has been done has been done in an effort to make life easier for us. There was a constant reiteration that the core purpose of their efforts is to make life as enjoyable as possible for us developers at the coal face struggling to get apps developed in an increasingly complex environment. Sure - making a product as failsafe and simple to use is a good thing from a marketing point of view but so what? I can think of worse alternatives.
The first, and most important thing we got out of the meeting was this: Visual C++/MFC is alive and well. PDC 2000 was a launch of the new technologies surrounding .NET, and unfortunately the message that was delivered was a little murky on the future of C++/MFC. The guys at the meeting fully admit that in the post PDC analysis it became clear that while the message of .NET, including C# and ASP+ etc was disseminated effectively, there was an oversight in regards to telling the unwashed masses about the future of the old technologies - stuff like VC++ and ATL.
I'll talk more about specific technologies in upcoming instalments, but for now you can rest assured that Microsoft have made a major investment in the future of Visual C++, ATL and MFC.
Anyway, back to the gossip on the Microsoft team.
They are great guys. No, really. They are the sort of guys you would definitely want to hang around after work and have a beer or 3 with - and I'm not just saying that because they make way more money than me and I could guilt them into buying. And I'm also not saying this because they bought us lunch.
The Microsoft cafe is something else. It must have a dozen lines of different food: Mexican, Italian, Healthy Green Stuff, Tasty Fried Stuff, plus whatever else an overactive stomach could want after a hard days Empire building. Problem is (so I'm told - this would not be a problem for me) the diet starts to, well, wear a little thin. They called the way they eat "The Microsoft Diet" and supposedly after a year of facing the same choices each day, week in week out, it starts getting a little tiresome. This was being patiently explained to me as I tore into a huge Calzone (with a chocolate brownie surreptitiously stashed for later inspection), and Troy was scoffing down Pizza, Extra Large. They were talking to the guy for whom 2 Minute Noodles are still considered a hearty lunch.
Anyway, we wobbled back to the meeting room, temporarily replete, to continue the chat. Eric Gunnerson gave us a rundown on C# and I even managed to score an autographed copy of is book "A programmers introduction to C#". I'm such a groupie. Again, another cool guy who loves the new language. He's the QA for Visual C++, but the author of a C# book, so I threw him the question "What language would you prefer people to be writing in, C# or VC++?" He thought that was amusing.
Later during the chat a couple of likely lads wandered in, and after doing the business card handshake one of them (Craig) looked at me, looked at the card, then did the "Oh - you're the...". You have no idea how cool it is to be recognised inside Microsoft. So anyway, they are fully aware that we are here, and that we are dead keen to hear what they have to say. And the great thing is that they are extremely keen to help us all as much as they possibly can. They have seen what we have at CodeProject and think it pretty cool that we've all come together in this way.
While in the meeting they bought up the "I've-gone-to-Redmond-got-any-questions??" page and went through the questions with me. It was eerie seeing the site up on their huge 26" screen. Mmmm - need to get me one of those babies...
And the answers to your questions were...
Your .NET questions answered - Visual C++.
This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)
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Ben McLemore of the Sacramento Kings speaks with NBA TV's Stacy Paetz... News PhotoAtlanta Hawks,Basketball - NBA Pro,Basketball - Sport,Ben McLemore,Cox Pavilion,Horizontal,Las Vegas,Match - Sport,NBA Summer League,Nevada,Sacramento Kings,Sport,Talking,USAPhotographer Garrett EllwoodCollection: National Basketball Association 2013 NBAELAS VEGAS, NV - JULY 19: Ben McLemore #16 of the Sacramento Kings speaks with NBA TV's Stacy Paetz after the game versus the Atlanta Hawks in NBA Summer League on July 19, 2013 at the Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas, Nevada. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2013 NBAE (Photo by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)


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In my last article I repeated Jim Cramer's five long-term investment themes and offered a stock pick to play the agriculture space. Another of the themes Cramer laid out on Tuesday's Mad Money was homeland security. He recommended American Science and Engineering Inc. (NASDAQ:ASEI), Nice Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE), and Verint Systems (NASDAQ:VRNT). Unfortunately, all these companies depend in some part on government contracts, which may or may not be there to support their growth going forward. In my view, cyber security is a potentially more profitable subsector, one that benefits from private sector spending in addition to public.
PC Magazine quotes a study that reports the costs associated with dealing with cyber crime went up 56% this year. "During a four-week period, organizations surveyed were hit with 72 successful cyberattacks a week, up 45 percent from the year before. Most of the attacks were in the form of distributed denial of service (DDoS), malicious code, stolen services, and Web-based attacks." This is a serious problem and one that's destined to become more challenging with the proliferation of mobile networks. One company on the front line is Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ:CHKP), the leading provider of network security solutions. Recently the company has begun making moves into portable encryption and is my top pick in the sector.
Earnings Trend
Earnings Trend
A strong and rising earnings trend often indicates a business benefiting from a competitive durable advantage and profit-minded management.
Check Point's Earnings per Share
2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 |
1.25 | 1.00 | .96 | .95 | 1.27 | 1.17 | 1.25 | 1.50 | 1.68 | 2.13 |
After chopping around a bit until mid-decade, Check Point's earnings have risen steadily since 2006. The 3-year average EPS growth rate is 19.4%.
Great businesses typically generate strong cash flows and require little debt financing. I like to see long-term debt less than three times current net earnings. With zero long-term debt, Check Point is in excellent financial shape.
Return on Equity
Return on Equity
Companies that consistently deliver high returns on equity create the true wealth for shareholders. Average businesses typically offer a 12% return on equity while great businesses return over 15%.
Check Point's Return on Equity
2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 |
43.95 | 24.26 | 18.42 | 16.06 | 18.77 | 15.95 | 15.75 | 16.73 | 16.49 | 17.97 |
Check Point's 10-year average ROE mirrors its current growth rate at 20%.
Retained Earnings
Retained Earnings
I want to own companies that are free to reinvest retained earnings at high rates of return. What I don't want to see is high research and development costs or capital expenditures in the form of plant and equipment replacement. Check Point's R&D costs are manageable at 10% of net income and capex is very light. Net margins are more than triple the industry average and year after year, free cash flow is positive and rising.
At $53.73, Check Point sells for a P/E of 23.1, which is higher than its historical average of 18.1. Though the stock is a more compelling buy on a pullback to the low to mid $40's, a level I expect it will reach if (when?) we retest 1100 on the S&P, the current price still offers a 6.1% free cash flow yield. While much of the tech space is priced to the clouds, Check Point's growth is available right now at a reasonable price.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.


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Winsock - create new thread and assign a port number
Hello all,
I have a clientA program that connects to the server. What i need is to create a thread in the clientA call it clientB which has a different port. The clientA sends the IP address and Port number of the clientB to the server, and the server sends the Message "Hello" to the clientB and not ClientA. First of all i dont know how to create a thread and how to assign a port to a thread. Please help, Its very urgent... Thanks |
Re: Winsock - create new thread and assign a port number
If you are unable to create thread you can refer to Interprocess communication through Named pipes. Its a multithreaded client server program but the process communication is htough pipes and it should help you to start off.
Re: Winsock - create new thread and assign a port number
I dont know how much this will help I used these as reference to create threads but I myself have troubles with threads
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/...ad_create.html http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/proven/IAP_2000/ |
All times are GMT +5.5. The time now is 04:55. |


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Music Department Professor Rob Middleton was a guest on One-on-One with Steve Adubato. Middleton, a composer and conductor, shared how he first became interested in jazz, as a child, after hearing Charlie Parker play. He describes jazz as a crown jewel of African American culture, a profound expression of the American experience and talks about how all Americans should be familiar with this great cultural heritage. He described how he went from performing to teaching and how teaching helps one understand music on a deeper level. Middleton said university learning environment can be a good place to open up the world of music to students who have not had much exposure to the study of music, and jazz in particular.
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Tutorial Details: Image Processing Using MATLAB
Date: | Thursday, April 7, 2011, 01:00 pm - 03:00 pm |
Location: | 575 Walter |
Instructor(s): | Ravishankar Chityala, MSI |
MATLAB is a general computational platform for rapid development of programs. It also has several toolboxes that allow specialized computation on images. One such toolbox, the Image Processing Toolbox, has hundreds of functions that can be used to perform operations on images. The various image processing operations can be classified into reading, processing, and writing images. We will begin the tutorial by performing simple image-reading operations on jpeg, gif, and other formats. We will also discuss reading complex image formats like DICOM. We will then perform various image processing operations like filtering, visualization and analysis and will output these images to different formats to be read by other applications.
Level: | Advanced |
Prerequisites: | MATLAB programming and basic image processing |


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If there is no associated stop/limit order, the values of the Stop and Limit parameters in the Trades table are "0" and the values of the StopOrderID and LimitOrderID parameters are empty.
Looking forward to receiving it.a) ExtAsyncOperationFinished
Will send the code sample to reproduce the problem shortly
You can use the method host:execute("getTradingProperty", conditionalDistance*,...) to get the minimal allowed distance between the market rate and the rate of the order. Besides, to avoid the error, use wider distance on the volatile market, for example when news comes.b) Error "The Entry,Stop or Limit price you are entering is incorrect .. "
I am using Stop Order for an existing position with the Rate specified and TrailUpdatePips set to 1. Any way to suppress the errors/warning and not to let Strategy to stop?


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January 22, 2012
Great Reads of the Week
Here's a round up of posts I enjoyed reading this week for you to enjoy this weekend:
- IFB had a great post explaining how the SOPA/PIPA bills will affect your fashion blog. Very important! Read up about SOPA/PIPA if you haven't already.
- Dress With Courage discusses the importance of a blog mentor.
- Leia's Delights brings up an interesting point about privacy in the blogosphere.
- Made to Travel created this super easy DIY jewelry holder!
- Penny Pincher Fashion had a great DIY that showed a creative way to use nail polish. I must try!
What are your weekend plans? Go Giants!
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